There are so many parallels between Joel’s day and our own. Are there any lessons to be learned by us?

Read: Joel 1: 1-15

A devastating plague of locusts and an untimely drought wreak havoc across the land. People are dying and the economy is in ruins. God gave Joel the task of speaking into this situation.

As I write these words, we are living through a global pandemic at a time of political unrest and nations at war. People are sick and dying, and the economies of many countries are struggling to recover. What does the prophet Joel have to say to us today?

It’s likely that Joel was speaking in the aftermath of an actual plague of locusts in the land. Even today, such locust swarms are the nemesis of the subsistence economies in many lands. Just last night I watched a documentary about just such a swarm that was threatening the rice harvest in the highlands of Madagascar.

But as so often happens with prophecy, God causes Joel to move from the present actual to the future possible. The plague of locusts is just like the invading armies that have laid waste to both the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. I tend to attribute a late date to the prophecy, maybe early on in the time after the exile, when the people are returning from the Persian empire and beginning to rebuild Jerusalem.

He focuses on the idea of the Day of the Lord. I believe there had been a number of Days of the Lord, days when God allowed disaster to befall the people so that they would be confronted with their sin and disobedience. But, having confronted it and turned back to God, God then delivered them. This cycle is very evident throughout the Old Testament. The Exodus, the times of the Judges and the Exile would be three such stories, pivotal to the story of God’s relationship to his people. These ‘Days of the Lord’ were always local and limited to the Jewish people.

But Joel seems to be hinting that there would be a future Day of the Lord, a Day to end all days, a day to bring the constant cycle of disaster and deliverance to an end once and for all. More of that later in the series.

In the meantime, let’s be encouraged by God’s presence in these difficult times, and his promise to rescue and deliver his people.

What lessons of disaster and deliverance might God be calling us to learn at this time – as individuals, as the church and as a nation. What part do we have to play in bringing God’s desire for us into being?